Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Teaching Is Relationship Building-Something School Reformers Often Forget

One
of the most pernicious examples of the tunnel vision of school reformers
is the “school turnaround” concept incorporated in the Obama
Administration’s “Race To the Top” legislation and currently being
implemented in school districts throughout the nation. “Turnaround”
strategy proposes that a school designated as “failing”-invariably
on test scores- be closed and either replaced with a charter school or
reopened as a new school, in the same facility, with a different
principal and no more than fifty percent of the current teaching staff.
Not only does this concept presume that “bad teachers” are the primary
cause of a school’s alleged failures, but it places no value on
relationships that teachers build with students and their families,
relationships that often last far beyond the time they were in class and
are integral to student success and help sustain teacher morale even in
the most daunting conditions Anyone who has been a teacher knows that
building up the confidence of students and giving them the courage to
realize their potential and find their voice involves more than
classroom learning. It often requires individualized instruction and
mentoring, joint participation in extracurricular activities and trips,
and a commitment to maintain communication long after the student leaves
your class. When this happens, students come to see relationships with
their teachers as sources of strength throughout their lives, a form of
“cultural capital” that allows them to surmount obstacles and realize
their dreams. In working class and poor communities, where families are
under constant stress, lifetime communication with teachers can be the
critical factor enabling students to stay in school in the face of
crises that would crush most people.

Janet Mayer’s wonderful
new book, As Bad As They Say: Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx,
provides example of example of how this longtime Bronx teacher supported
her students through personal challenges that included evictions,
murders, rapes, heatless homes, unemployed parents and responsibilities
for raising younger siblings. This influence didn’t just take place when
students were in Mayer’s classes. It often went on for fifteen or
twenty years after they left her school. And it led to students who
could have easily fallen through the cracks becoming productive,
successful citizens, some of them teachers themselves. The power of
relationship building- something that cannot be measured by student
performance on standardized tests- is something I have experienced over
and over again in my own teaching at the college level. The most
transformative moments in my teaching have not taken place during class
sessions, or on midterm or final examinations, but it individual
encounters with students where they confront obstacles and with my help,
confronted strategies to overcome them

An example of this,
from the late 90’s remain etched in my memory. M was a Fordham
basketball star from an Irish working class family in New Jersey, who
along with some of her teammates, had enrolled in several of my Black
history classes at Fordham . She was incredibly shy, never saying a word
in class, but one day, she showed up in my office and started crying.
“Dr Naison,” she said, “I don’t belong at this school. I only got 800 on
my SAT’s and I feel like everyone here is so much smarter than me. What
am I going to do?” I took a deep breath, prayed I wouldn’t screw this
up, and started developing a strategy. “M, they aren’t smarter than you,
they just have more educated parents and went to better high schools.
But we are going to overcome that. Every time you write a paper, hand me
a rough draft a week before and I will edit if for you. Before every
test, come with your friends to my office and I will give you a strategy
for studying as a group. And in return, you and your friends can work
with me on my crossover and spin moves!” The last comment drew a
reluctant smile from M and she went to work. Little by little, she went
from being a C student, to a B student, to getting B+’s and A-‘s in the
last class she took with me during the second semester of her senior
year. But the best part of this transformation was watching M find her
voice. By the time she graduated, she was not only participating
regularly In class discussions, she was being perceived as a leader by
her fellow students, including those who came in to the school with much
higher SAT’s and grades. After she graduated from Fordham M’s
confidence only grew. After playing pro basketball in Europe for several
years, she returned to New Jersey and became a teacher and coach, using
her own hard won confidence to build the confidence of others

.
In my forty years at Fordham, I have built many relationships with
individual students I have taught, some of whom have gone on to become
mayors of cities, leaders of government agencies, world renowned
scholars and journalists, but no teaching or mentoring experience has
been more satisfying than the one I had with M. Why? Because M
represents the majority of students attending schools in America’s poor
and working class communities. They not only lack the skills that upper
middle class students acquire in their families and the high performing
schools they attend, they often suffer from a crippling lack of
self-confidence in approaching the tasks that schools present. That
confidence deficit, I am convinced, is at least as important as the
skills deficit and it cannot be overcome through test prep drills and
group instruction. It requires individual attention from teachers, and
not just in a classroom setting. It requires extra work and
encouragement after school, on weekends, and sometimes long after the
student leaves the teachers direct care. If you rotate teachers in and
out of schools at a dizzying rate and create pressures that drive them
out of the profession after a few years, you will destroy the
relationship building component that is at the heart of great teaching.
Ironically, under the pressure of federal mandates, this is being done
in the very communities that have the greatest need for inspired
teaching and mentoring.